As the demand for and level of digital content continues to expand in our society, our youth continue to be exposed to content by producers that parents do not want their children to see. Unfortunately the movie and other industries do not police themselves nor do they successfully keep harmful content from minors. The openness of the internet provides the ability of minors to have continuous access to inappropriate content. This continues to be a problem as parents often cannot police the streaming content into their homes due to the lack of advances in digital control technology.
The problem with uncontrolled digital content is not limited to just movies. Digital media covers many aspects of our society and includes not only movies, but also music and video games. None of this digital media employs a common filtering or rating system that can be used by parents or other adults that may wish to preclude inappropriate content from coming into their homes. Search engines and media players also have no way of knowing if the content is appropriate for the value systems of their customers, other than G, PG, R ratings. And even though a movie rating may be provided on some content, such as movies, the movie ratings do not offer enough rating detail for most families nor do they provide any filtering options. Nor do the ratings break down with particularity and inform a user as to what content has caused a rating to be rated R, PG, or other rating.
It is not uncommon for one scene in a movie or one word in a video game to be the only offensive aspect of the media content. The current parental control technology may either block all PG content or none of it. It doesn't allow the user to block part of the content, and it doesn't allow the user to block content for specific offensive content. Current parental control technology blocks entire web sites, even those that offer valuable content for students because of one article or word. They block entire movies or video games because of the rating, when users might not be offended.
It would be desirable to provide a tool, system and methodology to block specific offensive content such as, but not limited to, nudity and language, without blocking specific content such as violence. Such improved media system should be flexible, selectable and work simultaneously with movies, music, video games, and other electronic mediums and products.